Ivory (10 page)

A witness. He knew the guilt was making him jump to
conclusions, but if any of the faculty had said about Martin’s
accident then when the story of King’s death broke Richard
might,
might
, put
two and two together. Maybe he wouldn’t. The York Way road Richard
was on was as infamous as Arven Road, but for a clientele whose
interests swung the ‘other way’. Richard – a prostitute?
‘Mummy and Daddy’ Hadleigh were well off. City
man, professional housewife, country clubs and weekend golfing,
active Conservatives. Maybe that would be a secret that Richard
would want to keep. It could dissuade him from disclosing any
suspicions. So, Richard Hadleigh was a queer renter. There was
little victory in this knowledge, only sympathy for the boy’s
situation and worry that Richard was one other lead that could
connect Martin to a murder.

King’s final words in his nightmare had been a corruption of
his father’s parting words to him, when Martin had confronted him
with knowledge of his father’s affair with his old Sunday school
teacher. He had criticised his father for his hypocrisy of being a
‘godly’ man preaching to Martin and his mother an adherence to
Catholic beliefs and morals, when all the while he had been fucking
Mrs Harcourt behind their backs. His father, with tears in his
eyes, apparently tears of genuine grief and self-loathing, had
stated with a defeated air;
“You can judge
me, but you will be a man one day, with the same blood flowing in
your veins, and you will know that we are the same, you and
I.”

These thoughts
and memories were followed by a vivid image of King’s twisted
mutilated body. Martin’s stomach lurched. He made the bathroom in
seconds and gagged up more bile. It frothed and burned at his
throat and he fell against the cool tiles, his face pressed hard
against the icy wall. Utterly alone in his torment.

The next day the
Independent
and
Metro
newspapers that he had picked up on the bus
didn’t shout ‘PIMP MURDERED IN ARVEN’ from their front pages as he
had fantasised that they would. With a new day separating him from
yesterdays events he was able to rationalise that King’s body might
not get discovered for a couple of days. It certainly wouldn’t have
made it into today’s copy.

He had
considered hiding at home, but had gone to work in the hope that
the routine would distract him. It did for the most part but there
were moments where a student’s sketch of a prone body, the sight of
vermillion paint squeezed from a tube or the mention of death or
murder that caused his mind to leap like a needle jumping on a
record to the scene of last night, and transported him to the
moment of King’s death and into hellish guilt. The twisted body.
The glass. The blood. His actions would become hesitant, his words
would trail and he could feel the class looking at him and then at
one another in concern, anxious giggles would ride the waves of
heads in his lecture. By the end of the day he was tired and he had
switched off completely with the shaky bus ride home.

Martin scanned
the dark evening streets and the coloured lights, illuminated
windows and nameless figures and faces that blur past, the hustle
and bustle of life that he was safely detached from on the creaking
gloomily lit bus ploughing through traffic from stop to stop. The
world fast forwarded past him while he sat detached. The bus came
to rest at one stop while the driver ended his shift and another
boarded and took over. Martin averted his eyes as the worlds play
button was pressed and everything moved at normal speed. He stared
at the cracked grey pavement. Rain began to make dark spots on its
surface, building at speed until the whole pavement became
varnished ebony. Ebony.

Before he
would contemplate the mysteries of Ivory and Ebony, Martin sensed a
passenger hesitating by the empty seat next to him. He became aware
of words in the air but his trance lost their meaning and he broke
his gaze as the bus pulled from the stop into the traffic. “Sorry?”
He apologised.

A familiar
voice reaffirmed itself. “Are you alright?”

Martin was
startled to be looking up into Richard Hadleigh’s youthful face.
Richard dumped his masculine frame into the empty seat as the bus
pitched from side to side on its journey. Martin’s suspicions
flared as he saw empty seats were dotted around the bus.

“
I was queuing up with you back at the campus, and you didn’t
even see me. It’s not like you to be on the bus and you looked so
distracted I thought I would come over and see if you were okay.
The word is that you weren’t yourself today.”

“
You mean my lecture wasn’t up to
standards?
Perhaps I should invite
you in as a guest speaker – you could talk about scrap yards. It
could be inspirational.”

Presented with
the same arguments that had dogged their relationship since Richard
had shifted his medium, he gave up and stared toward the front of
the bus.

“
Fuck, you,” he muttered

“
Well, I don’t know. I haven’t won any grants lately so money
is a bit short, just how much do you charge?”

Richard’s cheeks bloomed red and a pained expression
sharpened his features. “So you
did
see me. I wasn’t sure if you had.”

“
So that’s why you came over. To see if I was ‘alright’,”
Martin stated incredulously. “You just want to check if your secret
is safe.”

“
I was trying to be
friendly
,” Richard spoke through
gritted teeth before his face relaxed and his voice lowered
guiltily. “Is it? Safe, I mean.”

Martin nodded.
Their feud didn’t seem very important any more. The issues that
fuelled Martin’s dissatisfaction and anger seemed petty and
insignificant after last night.

“
Thank you.” Richard sagged into his seat and visibly relaxed.
“I did genuinely want to see if you were okay though. I guess I
also hoped my concern might go some way to clearing the atmosphere
between us.”

“
That’s quite an agenda attached to asking after my
well-being.”

“
Things haven’t been the same between us since I stopped
painting.”

“
It doesn’t matter now.”

“
You have treated me like the enemy. It seemed to matter
then.”

“
Well, it doesn’t now.” Martin stated despondently and kept
his eyes on the traffic that competed with the speed of their
bus.

“
It matters to me.”

“
I’m sorry.” Martin descended into self convictions. It had
been Martin who had created the rift through his jealousy and fear
of Richard’s success An image of King’s body slashed through his
concentration. He had enough guilt to not want to be carrying this
around as well. “I am sorry I have treated you that way,” he stated
with more conviction. “I have been a shit.”

“
No arguments from me there.” Richard shrugged his thick
shoulders. “So, what’s up?”

Martin gave
Richard a second look, studied him and examined his motives for
asking. Concern seemed the hardest reason to accept after Richard
had witnessed his urgent getaway. “Everything,” he sighed.

“
I guess we all have moments like that.”

Ordinarily the
platitude would have naturalised his despair, but he was pretty
sure that Richard hadn’t factored in the possibility of being
accused of murder when offering that comfort. However, it did serve
the effect of moving beyond the conversational dead end Martin had
created and they began to talk, not as openly and passionately as
they had when student and teacher, but casually and warmly
discussing interests in life and art that were a great distraction
from the guilt and thinking about the previous night. The points of
tension in their relationship were reduced to moments easily
sidestepped, or when the flow of conversation was quick and intense
their problems were playfully mocked. Martin was actually pleased
for Richard when he explained that the piece that had won the UDAC
was going to be on display at the Gagosian Gallery as part of a
showcase of up and coming London Talent. When Richard broke his
sentence to declare Kingsland Road as his stop, Martin found it an
unnatural end to their conversation and the distraction it offered,
and he was grateful when Richard suggested a coffee in a café near
the bus stop.

Martin sat his cup of tea down as they found a seat in the
window. It was an independent café, probably a greasy spoon
originally, but it was aspiring for the look of the larger chains
of coffee shops with plush faux leather and suede seating, modern
blocky dark wooden furniture and satin metal features and light
fittings. It didn’t quite work as it had clearly been done on the
cheap and he recognised most of the furnishings from
Argos
or the bargain end
of
Ikea.

“
I live in the flat above. It’s quite handy, they do good
coffee and a mean cooked breakfast, although they have tried to go
a bit ponsey.”

“
I didn’t realise you had moved out. I thought you would have
commuted from your parents place?”

“
I had to move out.” Richard averted his eyes to his drink.
“Coming out at uni was easy. I had nothing to lose. When Mum and
Dad found out I had everything to lose, and I did. Dad gave me a
condition: I would only be his son if I decided to like girls. I
explained that being gay was not a choice and that it was most
likely biological, that it was no longer a deviance or related to
witchcraft,
and that
aversion therapy or
burning at the
stake was not required these days.”

“
Always a good time for humour, Richard.”

“
Yeah, well, you know me. H
e didn’t
like the biological bit. Thought it insinuated that
he
was gay and he
doesn’t have a gay cell in his body.
I
called him a Tory wanker and a bigot. We exchanged every pent up
frustration we had stored up and we basically talked ourselves out
of being related to each other.”

“
He kicked you out?”

“
No, Mum would never have allowed it. I walked
out.”

“
Oh, Richard.”

“
I know.” He held his hands up in surrender. “Dramatic, but
Dad won’t have me home now, so I guess we are both as bad as each
other.”

“
I didn’t realise all this was going on.” A heat washed
through Martin. He didn’t know because he had cut Richard out of
his life.

“
It happens. I have a job, but the money is rubbish. It costs
money to make those pieces of scrap. Prize money from the uni has
given me a well needed boost. Plus I have other ways of making
money. Which isn’t as bad as you think, before you judge me.”
Richard took a drag from his drink. “That’s my story. Now
yours.”

Martin
followed Richard’s example and stared into his cup as he gathered
up the threads of his life of late and weaved them into an
unincriminating tapestry that he could safely display. “There is a
girl.”

“
Do you love her?” Richard asked bluntly.

Martin pushed his drink away. “Jesus, Richard! No!” Martin
snapped. If he felt something for Ivory then it meant his motives
for contact with her were questionable. He wanted to paint her that
was all. “No.” He managed more calmly. A voice from unseen red
rheumy lips whispered in Martin’s ear;
“We
are the same, you and I.”

Richard cut
into the following fall of silence as Martin struggled to work the
rest into words. “But, you are thinking of having an affair?”

“
No.” Martin flagged Richard down. “Listen, don’t interrupt,
let me get it all out.” The noise of the café filled in the silence
that Richard offered. “I have met a girl and she’s…” He considered
how to describe it. “Conjured up a storm inside me. For a while now
I have been unhappy. I have been going through the motions. Finding
life banal at best, suffocating at worst.”

“
I used to feel bad when I would come around yours, our chats
and our work would take you away from Jenny, Oscar and Finn for
hours on end.”

“
This is going to sound dreadful but I was grateful for
it.”

“
It’s not dreadful. I don’t think men ever stop being boys.
The things they loved as kids stay with them, and usually they are
not shared by their wives later on. My dad loves flying radio
controlled aeroplanes. He’s always in a field somewhere at the
weekends with his friends.”

“
Well, family pressures don’t always allow for such
indulgences, and at some point the spark went out of my
work.”

“
It was just before I switched classes. I remember you
struggling a little then.”

Martin
absently broke off a piece of his almond croissant and pushed it
around the plate, mopping up the flakes of pastry. “I thought you
had switched because of it.”

“
No.” Richard shook his head solemnly.

“
Well. I have been teaching my students how to paint and
express themselves in oils and acrylics, and the truth is I can’t
do it myself anymore. Yet I have found a subject that I am dying to
paint because I am sure she could help me reignite my artistic
fire.” He sat back and tossed the piece of pastry back on to the
plate. “She is so beautiful. Ever since I have seen her I have
wanted to paint her, to somehow capture her. I’m an artist: I have
seen beautiful things before. Painted them.
Recreated them perfectly.
It’s just
that there’s something alluring and mysterious in her beauty –
something that I haven’t been able to capture in my
paints.”